Some surprising color facts

Click on the photograph below to go thru NPR's  
"A Weird Little Lesson, In Rainbow Order" 
with visuals inspired by MIT professor Arthur C. Hardy 

Colorado girls recruited by ISIS (audio)

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Bamboo bicycles (video)

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Height requirements in China

WHEN two security guards in Dalian in north-east China got their first month’s pay packet earlier this year, they questioned why each received different amounts for identical work. The company responded that one man was 5cm taller than his peer. Workers over 180cm earn more, they said, because bigger guards make people feel safer.

Stature is often a desirable attribute of guards, but in China height requirements are routinely specified for jobs which seem to have no need of them. To study tourism and hotel management at Huaqiao University in Fujian province, men topping 170cm and women over 158cm are favoured. A post as a female cleaner in Beijing is advertised to women of at least 162cm. Many companies are less explicit about such demands than they used to be, but candidates often list height (and weight) on their curricula vitae.

The height premium is most pronounced for women, according to a study from Huazhong University of Science and Technology. It found that each centimeter above the mean adds 1.5-2.2% to a woman’s salary, particularly among middle- and high-wage earners. A group at China University of Political Science and Law is working on a draft law against employment discrimination for height and other physical characteristics.

Chinese are rising above such constraints, however. A 45-year-old man in China today is around 5cm taller than 30 years ago, according to the RAND Corporation, a think-tank

Greater heights mostly reflect greater incomes. Richer people tend to eat more and live in cleaner, better homes. Meat consumption per person has increased more than fourfold since 1980. Infant mortality is less than a tenth of what it was 60 years ago. Household size has also helped. Historically people from big families have been shorter (not just in China) because food supplies must stretch further. In China the birth rate fell sharply from the 1970s nationwide.

But there are differences across the country which reflect the uneven benefits of the economic boom. Eighteen-year-olds from the richest cities are on average 7-8cm taller than those from the poorest ones. The height gap between prosperous and impoverished rural areas is similar.

Employers’ preference for high staff exacerbates that inequality. They should grow up.

edited from The Economist

The economic benefits of being beautiful

Will Apple Pay work?

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Our smartphones are already our de facto camera, music player, navigational device and personal assistant. Now Silicon Valley wants to make them our wallet, too.

Apple's service, dubbed Apple Pay, will allow customers to buy goods in physical stores with a simple tap of their iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus or Apple Watch smartwatch, when that device hits shelves in early 2015. Apple Pay users will load their credit card information onto the phone and then press their device’s Touch ID fingerprint scanner in the checkout line to authenticate the purchase. The process will be faster and more secure than using a debit card. Apple will generate a unique ID number for each transaction, meaning users' credit card data numbers will not be shared with merchants.

Apple Pay is launching just as the smartphone is becoming a central point of commerce for the average shopper. Consumers spent $110 billion via their mobile devices last year, according to research firm Euromonitor, and they used their phones to research products before buying them in stores.

But consumers are still reluctant to give up their credit cards. Mobile payments generated $4.9 billion in sales in 2014, a paltry figure compared to the year's $4.8 trillion in card transactions, according to Euromonitor.

The transition to mobile payments is challenging because it requires buy-in from so many different players. Consumers have to be convinced it’s worth their time to learn a new buying behavior. Retailers have to pay for new equipment so their point-of-sale systems can accept payment from phones and smartwatches. Banks and credit card issuers also have to buy in.

Apple has a few key advantages over its competitors. The company has a knack for convincing people to change their digital lifestyles, whether by downloading MP3s, surfing the web on a phone or using a large tablet to watch videos. And thanks to the iTunes Store, Apple has more than 500 million credit cards already on file. Those customers will be able to start using the same accounts they use to buy apps and music to buy goods in the real world when they first boot up Apple Pay.

However, analysts say convincing shoppers to give up credit cards, which are already fairly painless to use, will take more than just offering convenience. The most successful mobile payments platform to date is the Starbucks app, which rewards customers who pay via their phones with free drinks and other perks. Today, Starbucks processes about 15% of all its transactions on the app, or about 6 million per week.

“The customers really feel It’s not just about payments,” says Ben Straley, Starbucks’ vice president for digital products. “It’s also about being rewarded for their loyalty.”.

With many competitors offering mobile payment options, analysts expect the segment will finally take off soon. Euromonitor projects in-store purchases via phone will rise to $74 billion by 2019 — though that's still a far cry from the trillions in card purchases we see today. Mobile devices are already becoming a common tool for buying things in the virtual world. It could very well happen in the real world, too. “It’s just shopping, whether you’re buying it in a store or buying it online,” says PayPal’s Nayar. “The lines between what that looks like have started to disappear.”

edited from Times

Plunging Oil Prices Impact (video)

 

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Beijing marathon choked by smog

In spite of heavy pollution blanketing Beijing on Sunday, the city’s international marathon went ahead, with face masks and sponges among the paraphernalia used by competitors to battle the smog.
The 34th Beijing International Marathon began at Tiananmen Square, with many of the tens of thousands of participants wearing face masks.
The 42.2km course ended at the Chinese capital’s Olympic Park. The men’s race was won by Ethiopia’s Girmay Birhanu Gebru in 2 hours, 10 minutes and 42 seconds, while Fatuma Sado Dergo won the women’s in 2:30:30.

The Book With No Pictures by B.J. Novak (video)

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Wedding insurance

JUST as each wedding creates potential business for divorce lawyers, so each engagement gives insurers a chance to drum up business. 


High prices, and the fact that many venues require couples to take out liability insurance, feed demand for wedding insurance, which began in Britain: Cornhill, an insurer, wrote its first policy in 1988. But there were few takers. The idea only took off once transplanted to America. Today a fifth of American couples buy it, says the Wedding Report, a trade publication.

In the early days there were incidents of couples faking engagements to collect a payout. Since then, most policies have a clause that excludes “change of heart”. WEDSURE insures against cold feet, but its policy will pay out only if the wedding is cancelled more than 12 months before it is due to take place, thereby guarding against fiancés (or their parents) phoning the broker once the relationship is already on the rocks.

Common causes of payouts include the venue or caterers going bust after having taken a big deposit. Extreme weather, a spouse being deployed by the armed forces and an absent priest can all trigger payouts. Most policies will pay to re-stage the photos if the snapper fails to turn up or disappears with the pictures. 

For some, even a small risk of something going wrong on a day that has been planned for months is worth paying to avoid. Who says romance is dead?

edited from The Economist

 

Will Thai traffic officers down bribes?

 (Reuters) - Thailand's traffic policemen will get money in return for refusing bribes, police said on Thursday. This is part of the government's efforts to combat an ingrained culture of corruption.
"This monetary incentive will encourage officers to look out for traffic violators who try to bribe," said Police Major General Adul Narongsak, deputy chief of the Metropolitan Police Bureau, adding that two policemen were recently awarded 10,000 baht ($310) for refusing a $3 bribe.
Thai police salaries start at about 6,000 baht ($185) a month, according to 2013 data, well below the national average.
For car drivers in Bangkok, where traffic jams are among the world's worst, slipping a policeman a banknote or two when stopped for a minor traffic offense is not uncommon. But motorists might soon find police officers turning down their offers.
"We want to change perceptions and practices and to reward those who show that they are clean, We encourage people to take photographs as evidence," Adul said.
Thailand is ranked 102 out of 177 countries in Transparency International's 2013 Corruption Perceptions Index.
Thailand’s military government is aiming at cleaning up Thailand's image as a haven for vice. The junta is also focusing on taxi gangs at airports and on drug users by ordering more police checks.

edited from Reuters